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These six tablets span four operating systems, multiple screen sizes and a range of connectivity features. (Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com)In today’s crowded market, looking for a tablet is like buying a new car. Everything looks great when it’s slick, polished and sitting on the lot. The hard part is keeping track of what’s under the hood.
Wired.com took some of the front-runners from the current tablet field — the brand-new HP TouchPad, Apple’s iPad, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and others — and stacked up their features side by side in the chart below.
In the wake of Apple’s iPad, which released April 2010, technology manufacturers are quickly churning out competing slates in hopes of luring customers into the new product category with fancy hardware and flashy apps. The tablet market is quickly gaining momentum with a new slate hitting stores every month.
(Speaking of apps, don’t miss our breakdown of software ecosystems, explaining the pros and cons of the app stores on each mobile operating system.)
- Device
- Hardware
- Software/Connectivity
- Performance
- HP TouchPad
$500-600 - Processor: 1.2-GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon
Storage: 16 or 32 GB
RAM: 1GB
Cameras: 1.3-megapixel front-facing, no rear camera
Dimensions: 9.45 by 7.48 by 0.54 inches
Weight: 1.6 pounds - OS: webOS 3.0
DLNA: No
Wi-Fi/3G/4G: Wi-Fi only, AT&T version coming soon
Bluetooth: Yes
Ports: micro USB, no SD card slot - Battery Life: Approximately 8 hours under heavy use; closer to 9 or 10 hours under casual use conditions.
Javascript Test Results Average: 4128.47 ms
- Motorola Xoom
$600-800 - Processor: 1-GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2
Storage: 32GB
RAM: 1GB
Cameras: 2-megapixel front-facing; 5-megapixel back-facing camera
Dimensions: 9.8 by 6.61 by 0.51 inches
Weight: 1.56 to 1.6 pounds (depending on version) - OS: Android 3.1 (Honeycomb)
DLNA: No
Wi-Fi/3G/4G: Wi-Fi, Verizon 4G (eventually)
Bluetooth: Yes
Ports: micro USB, HDMI-out, microSD - Battery Life: Approx. 8 to 8.5 hours
Javascript Test Results Average: 2170.6 ms
- Apple iPad
$400-$730 (where available) - Processor: 1-GHz Apple A4
Storage: 16, 32 or 64GB
RAM: 256MB
Cameras: None
Dimensions: 9.56 by 7.47 by 0.5 inches
Weight: 1.5 to 1.6 pounds - OS: iOS 4.3
DLNA: No
Wi-Fi/3G/4G: Wi-Fi, 3G (AT&T)
Bluetooth: Yes
Ports: Proprietary - Battery Life: Approx. 10 hours
Javascript Test Results Average: 3305.9 ms
- Apple iPad 2
$500-830 - Processor: 1-GHz dual-core Apple A5 custom-designed
Storage: 16, 32 and 64GB
RAM: 512MB RAM
Cameras: front and back-facing
Dimensions: 9.5 by 7.34 by 0.34 inches
Weight: 1.33 to 1.35 pounds (depending on model) - OS: iOS 4.3 (iOS 5 coming fall 2011)
DLNA: No
Wi-Fi/3G/4G: Wi-Fi, 3G (AT&T or Verizon)
Bluetooth: Yes
Ports: Proprietary - Battery Life: Approx. 10 hours
Javascript Test Results Average: 2163.3 ms
- RIM BlackBerry PlayBook
$500-700 - Processor: 1-GHz dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP
Storage: 16, 32 or 64GB
RAM: 1GB
Cameras: 3-megapixel front-facing, 5-megapixel back-facing
Dimensions: 7.6 by 5.1 by 0.4 inches
Weight: 0.9 pounds - OS: PlayBook OS (QNX)
DLNA: No (RIM claims it’s coming soon)
Wi-Fi/3G/4G: Wi-Fi, 4G versions to come (though some carriers are backpedaling)
Bluetooth: Yes
Ports: micro USB, HDMI - Battery Life: Approx 7.5 to 8 hours
Javascript Test Results Average: 2362.6 ms
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
$500-600 - Processor: 1-GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2
Storage: 16, 32 and 64GB
RAM: 1GB
Cameras: 2-megapixel front-facing, 3-megapixel back-facing;
Dimensions: 10.1 by 6.9 by 0.338 inches
Weight: 1.25 lbs - OS: Android 3.1 (Honeycomb)
DLNA: Yes
Wi-Fi/3G/4G: Wi-Fi only (AT&T 3G coming soon)
Bluetooth: Yes
Ports: Proprietary; no SD card slot - Battery Life: Approx. 9-10 hours
Javascript Test Results Average: 2188.9 ms
That’s a lot of info to digest, right? Fret not, tablet shoppers: Here’s some of that info broken down across seven categories.
Body
Essentially, choosing a piece of hardware that works for you boils down to taste and utility. Want something light and airy that won’t wear your arm out while e-reading? Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 has everyone beat; It’s the thinnest, lightest 10-inch tablet out to date, even besting the super-svelte iPad 2.
Maybe you want something smaller, or with a rubberized backing to combat your butterfingers. Almost the size of a trade paperback, BlackBerry’s seven-inch PlayBook would best suit your needs.
Tablets like the TouchPad, Xoom and first-gen iPad all weigh and measure in at approximately the same range, but with some of the recent slimmer releases, they’re starting to look positively bulky.
Power
In this generation of tablets, you aren’t going to see any chips backed by less than 1 GHz of processing power. Our two Android tablets run on Nvidia’s powerful Tegra 2 processor, while Apple’s iPads are powered by the custom-made Intel A4 and A5 series chips. RIM decided to go with a Texas Instruments OMAP, which Palm used in its Pre smartphones. Only the TouchPad clocks in at 1.2 GHz, running on a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ 8060 CPU.
Most of these tablets come with 1GB of RAM to keep things running smoothly, save Apple’s offerings — the iPad 1 comes with a paltry 256MB, while its successor doubles that amount.
It’s difficult to run a consistent processing benchmark across three different platforms, so we’re not going to give the edge to any one tablet quite yet. Still, Qualcomm’s next generation Snapdragon chip ran smooth as silk in the TouchPad — especially while multitasking — so we’re inclined to give it props.
Frontrunner: HP TouchPad
Cameras
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Shooting photos on a tablet is just weird. Like, “defending yourself in a food fight with a cafeteria tray” weird. Still, we’re all about choice here at Wired.com, and if you want to shoot photos on your tablet, some of these slates can accommodate.
Except for the first-gen iPad, which lacks any cameras at all. Similarly, the TouchPad comes with a front-facing camera for the Skype-loving crowd, but no rear camera for the shutterbugs.
All the rest come with front and back-facing cameras of variable quality, the iPad 2’s being the poorest of them all. The PlayBook has the highest resolutions on both front and back cameras, but you’ll lose viewfinder real estate with the device’s smaller screen. Conversely, the Xoom dips a touch in front-facing camera resolution while bumping up your screen size considerably.
Edge: Motorola Xoom
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